


Forbidden Mourning

by amitye



Category: Voyná i mir | War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
Genre: Bittersweet Ending, F/M, Getting Back Together, Grief/Mourning, Just Very Odd Boundaries, M/M, No Incest, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-12
Updated: 2020-11-12
Packaged: 2021-03-08 21:22:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,887
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27133124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amitye/pseuds/amitye
Summary: Dolokhov's eyes were red with mourning and his words meant to sound pleading, but his voice still sounded unwavering and confident, the hard lines of his face set in the same handsome frown, his shoulders still straight in his officers' greatcoat, arms spread wide to catch her and hold her securely to him, his hair still golden and curled as the first time she had danced with him in Anna Pavlovna's horrible painting gallery, giggling and hiding from her father. It made her blood boil.He had no right to be standing there like a wretched guardian angel of war and debauchery, ready to cheat or shoot or lie them out of any trouble that presented itself on their way, when she had believed him and entrusted him with her little brother's life and he brought nothing back to her but tears and apologies and a blood-stained jacket.
Relationships: Anatole Vasilyevich Kuragin & Elena "Hélène" Vasilyevna Kuragina, Fyodor "Fedya" Ivanovich Dolokhov/Anatole Vasilyevich Kuragin, Fyodor "Fedya" Ivanovich Dolokhov/Elena "Hélène" Vasilyevna Kuragina
Comments: 2
Kudos: 9
Collections: Fic In A Box





	Forbidden Mourning

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Alley_Skywalker](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alley_Skywalker/gifts).



"Please, don't, Lelya. He made me promise I would take care of you. Don't leave me too."

Hélène swayed like a drunk on the windowsill, shaking her head. She had been standing there already a good while and the idea of jumping had lost all its appeal the moment she had stepped out in the freezing snowstorm in just her frumpy maternity nightgown, but she didn't want to go back - she _couldn't_ no more than if she had turned to ice herself. 

Dolokhov's eyes were red with mourning and his words meant to sound pleading, but his voice still sounded unwavering and confident, the hard lines of his face set in the same handsome frown, his shoulders still straight in his officers' greatcoat, arms spread wide to catch her and hold her securely to him, his hair still golden and curled as the first time she had danced with him in Anna Pavlovna's horrible painting gallery, giggling and hiding from her father. It made her blood boil. 

He had no right to be standing there like a wretched guardian angel of war and debauchery, ready to cheat or shoot or lie them out of any trouble that presented itself on their way, when she had believed him and entrusted him with his little brother's life and he brought nothing back to her but tears and apologies and a blood-stained jacket. 

"Why do you even care? This isn't yours anyway." She spat back at him, pointing with a grimace at the lump of her belly. "You can just leave me here. Go back to look for that nice Rostov girl, bring her home to your mother, have your own army of little brats and let me die in peace. I thought you were tired of us, _this is the last time I risk prison for your little games_ you said. You've almost got what you wanted, now if you could-", you just have to let me-”

She shrieked as Dolokhov’s arms closed around her waist, until she felt the air cut off from her lungs. She tried to squirm away and they both fell in a heap over her bed. There were snowflakes in Dolokhov’s hair, melting down his neck. She started to shiver, and when he pulled her closer she started to cry. 

He was running his fingers through her hair and rubbing her hands to warm them, but he was rough and clumsy, pulling at her like a ragdoll - her head smacked against his chest when she tried to pull away. “We can’t do this.” She muttered, and Dolokhov stiffened the way he did when they were young and he was too affectionate in public, but she didn’t mean that.

“We’re not good at this. We need Anatole for this,” she forced herself to explain, wincing at the inelegant hoarseness of her voice.

She could feel Anatole’s absence between them like a tangible thing with sharp edges. There had never been an overabundance of hugs in their house, but where Hélène had been bratty and resentful for it Anatole had shrugged it off like he did with everything, simply nuzzling up to whoever passed by whenever he felt the need, regardless of whether he knew them or it was proper. 

She felt Dolokhov nod against her shoulder, his voice stiff and brittle. “It was easier with him, wasn’t it? Everything was.”

She thought of the last time they had all seen each other before Anatole left for Petersburg, sipping champagne in bed and teasing his broken heart, and all their sweet memories unfolded into that moment and she suddenly realized this was the first time she missed him and couldn’t just look forward for him to get a leave from his regiment or come on a surprise that would make her father sigh and grumble, and that so many more would come, day after day until she either died or hated herself and her own life to the point it was impossible to remember she had ever been happy.

She wailed, and Dolokhov wrapped his coat around her shoulders and curled up around her, his fingers shaking when he tried to wipe her tears. “Don’t do this, Lelya, he wouldn’t want you to.”

 _He’s about to cry,_ she realized, and all her anger evaporated into cold terror. It was an unnatural, foreign thought, as if her world could be turned upside down on the top of being torn apart at the root. 

“What… what did he say to you?” She managed to choke out, scrambling for any distraction. “He really remembered me?”

He would, but she couldn’t imagine Anatole being so aware and concerned 

“When he was a bit more lucid, yes. She told me to cheer you up, and to help you out to make peace with Bezukhov too. That he's not a bad fellow and you should be happy and make him an uncle." He sighed, and smiled that smile of his with only one corner of his mouth and her heart twisted tight. "He was already starting to slip away, but you know he meant he wanted you to be happy."

"No, no, he was always like that," she said, fully aware she would never find the words to describe him in a way that did him justice. She had always done it in jest because doing it in earnest would never feel enough - silly sweet boy, scatterhead puppy - but that didn't feel right anymore. 

"He was, God help me." He rubbed his eyes. Hélène shifted a bit so she was lying against his shoulder and could look at him in the eye - he would not cry with someone looking at him directly, it would help. "He cried when he was hurt, when I told him he would lose the leg, but then he - he was quite delirious, see, so he went down in very good spirits and left all the sufferings to me, as usual. Bolkonsky was hurt too, and when he found out he pestered me to go find some champagne and look for him so they could drink and agree with each other it had all been in very good fun and make peace. Sometimes he thought he was at my old country house, from when we were small, and he kept asking why my mother wasn’t there, and if she was still cross at him for that flower vase and if I was cross at him too. He begged me not to leave - a lot. And he asked where I thought our little bear had ended up, and he asked me why he never thought about it before. I told him, I’m the last person who can tell why you never think of anything. But he went on-”

Her lips twitched with a desire to smile that knew it had no reason to come real. “Never stopped talking for a minute, so?”

“Essentially, yes.” 

She nuzzled against Dolokhov’s chest - Anatole would call him Fedya too, she remembered that, but she had never managed except in bed. That was easier with him too. Impulsively, she turned up and brushed against his lips, softly and without bitterness, the way she had not dared to do since the wretched duel, when there was more between them than tension and hushed history and the bright red thread of Anatole’s love. “He’ll never be completely gone, you know.” She whispered in his ear. “Not as long as we’re together and we remember him.”

He sighed and shook his head and thought, if he didn’t speak out loud, something about the romanticism of silly women, but she knew he knew she was right.

~

Bolkonsky died too, it turned out, and Hélène had a monstrous, unwarranted feeling of fairness about it. Dolokhov, always delightfully eager to voice her worst feelings when she deemed it unrefined and inconvenient to do so, mumbled “Good riddance” in her ear. 

She could not blame him for being so crass. She remembered how everyone had whispered about a duel, and the long sleepless night Dolokhov had spent before Anatole left, stroking his hair and staring at his gun. Anatole had confessed to her on the verge of tears that he feared he had provoked Dolokhov too far with this elopement and that he might not want to be his second now if it came to that. Hélène didn’t disagree with that necessarily, but mostly because it was more likely Dolokhov would shoot the man on his own time before it came to a duel at all.

Still, Bolkonsky’s death left little Natasha free and only somewhat heartbroken, and the development made Hélène’s dear oaf husband much more compliant with her aspirations of divorce than she could ever have hoped. She handled the meeting with him with the necessary cold grace, hiding her pregnancy and red eyes impeccably and embellishing her speech with sufficient piety, but once he left - with a clumsy but endearing apology for once calling her the source of all depravity and evil in the world, and assuring her he now knew there must be goodness in her too - she fell on her sofa in such a laughing fit Dolokhov had to come in the room and throw a pillow at her to make her stop.

She had not yet decided who she should marry, and she thought it might be a smidge over the tolerance of even the most sophisticated Petersburg society to marry both pregnant and in mourning, so she did not. To make good use of what time she had left, she toured the city with Dolokhov, going from her husband’s mansion to her childhood home and finally Anatole and Dolokhov’s old revel house, where she had only been once before, smuggled in out of pure curiosity to meet her brother’s mysterious friend.

“You didn’t use to be so eager to be seen in carriages with me when we were young, princess Kuragina.” Dolokhov teased her on the way, his eyes glittering in a way she didn’t know she had missed.

She didn’t know how to explain, so she simply said “I am the most scandalous woman in all of Russia now.” and kissed him to change the subject, but he was right. She had been perfect, elegant and calculating for so long because she knew Anatole would need her protection and influence, and because she knew Anatole would always be there to make her laugh and make her reckless when it was needed. She didn’t know why to bother with many things now that she had lost her other half.

They put Anatole’s belongings in order, sent what had to be sent off to his wife in Poland, and gathered together a surprisingly well-organized stack of letters.

“I didn’t know he had gotten so neat. He was a disaster as a child.” She commented, absurdly delighted with the discovery he had separate tin boxes to sort letters from women, friends and “unwanted” - which included everyone in the family but Hélène - in decently accurate chronological order.

“He could be very efficient when he cared.” Dolokhov confirmed. “He needed it. Before he gave up and asked me to write the letter to the Rostov girl, I found him rummaging through the women’s letters for parts.”

She sighed and shook her head. Dolokhov raised his eyebrow when she started opening the old envelopes. “Don’t we want to respect his discretion?”

She shrugged. “We both know he never had one.”

He could not disagree. They went through the box of the women’s letters, reading the most egregious to each other out loud and mocking Anatole’s responses, imitating his voice and his sultry winks and his so-carefully chosen French compliments, until Hélène’s heart beat fast and she was barely balancing between laughter and tears.

She found her own letters at the bottom, bound together with the lilac ribbon she had given him when he went abroad as a boy. She pressed them to her chest, and Dolokhov stroked the paper as if his scent was still on them. 

“How come it’s with the women’s letters?” 

“I’m a woman.” She said, but then figured there wasn’t a point in hiding anything from him. “These are only those about a… certain subject matter. I suppose the others are somewhere else.” 

She remembered each letter more than she cared to admit, and each response too. She had kept these letters hidden between her mattress and sheet, only going through them when she was utterly sure of being alone, but of course Anatole wouldn’t. He had understood well enough the rumors about them, though then she would claim he was too young to, but he refused to make them matter, revolting like a wild animal against their parents when he was forbidden from kissing her on the cheek in public or sharing her bed. He wouldn’t care for what anyone who saw the letters in the wrong pile might think.

As Dolokhov tilted his head in curiosity, she picked a letter from 1804. 

“Dear Anatole, I kissed your friend Dolokhov yesterday, at the country dance” she started to read, smiling when his eyes widened in surprise in spite of himself. “It was very amusing. I like that he has no beard, for the last cad who tried scraped my cheeks so raw I could barely hide it from Mother. His hands didn’t wander either, but he had his hands around my shoulders and pressed me so tightly, as if I would run if he didn’t. I have red marks on me now, and I have to dress myself so I won’t be found out, but I don’t mind having a trace on me. He tastes like tobacco a little, but not bad, and you would not imagine how soft his lips - are you blushing?”

“Can’t imagine why I would,” Dolokhov said flatly. He was not really blushing, but Hélène knew the way his eyes darted and his lips pressed together when he was embarrassed and would rather die than show it.

“We knew so little of the world and of ourselves when we were children,” she said softly, taking Dolokhov’s hand. “We were… curious little brats, for sure, and we were never apart, so when we realized I would never kiss a girl nor he a boy, we figured out we could just tell each other everything about it and then it wouldn’t matter, because...”

She was not sure how to explain it. Because we were the same, she had thought when she was very small, and because it was the next best thing and siblings had to help each other as she grew older. It had made Dolokhov happy enough to take the two of them on the same bed, but she felt her answer would still be judged, compared to his own chivalrous and pure love for his sister and odd sudden moralistic whims.

Dolokhov smirked. “I see. Then you grew up and you learned there was no need and you would always be allowed to do whatever you wanted to whoever you wanted.” 

She shot a languid smile at him. “Because we had you by our side, yes.”

He rolled his eyes. “And he would have done the same with the little Rostov girl, wouldn’t he? Describe all the pretty things he would do to her and what’s under her pretty white dresses?”  
“I suppose so. Although there was also a chance I might have enjoyed her before there was any reason to write anything. Which is why, in fact, my letters about you never went further than kissing.” 

He shook his head. She pressed a teasing kiss on his knuckles. “What, are you jealous?”

“No. I know you two. I always knew what I was getting into, even when - when I wanted something different. One might as well be jealous of favorable wind, or luck in the game, or sunshine.” 

“Should I find that offensive?”

“No. One might have more success trying to stop being in love with sunshine, too.”

Suddenly, for a split second, she wondered why he had fallen on his knees. 

~ 

Little Anatole Fyodorovich Dolokhov was born in the early spring of 1813, two weeks after their haphazard wedding day. As soon as she could walk and the baby cried so vigorously there was no doubt he could be taken outside, they sat together by the creek where Dolokhov and her brother had played when they were children, in the grounds of an estate that no longer belonged to either of them, though Dolokhov had plans to change that. 

Sometimes, when she shifted to hold the baby in the shade and turned her eyes to the water, she could still see her other half darting along the riverbank, seeding clothes left and right in the enthusiasm of reaching the daring, charming boy who lived on the other side. Her husband had an arm around her waist and his eyes were half- closed as he laid against her shoulder, and she wondered if he saw him too, if he could hear his laugh, if he was speaking to him, somewhere in the depth of his head that he didn’t feel the need to keep strong and unreachable to withstand the new burden and duty of fatherhood. She didn’t ask.

She already knew they would be all together forever.


End file.
